Pit Kroke: photographie concrète
5 November – 7 December 2019
Pit Kroke (1940-2016), an internationally renowned architect, studied architecture, sculpture and photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, graduating top of his class in 1962.
He was deeply influenced by his professor Heinz Hajek-Halke, who taught him experimental photography. “Light in motion is structured using grids and other technical devices”, a duality that would remain the center of his artistic concerns.
In 1959, he produced a unique book-object of 34 silver prints on baryta paper that he called konkrete fotografie. This was the very first appearance of the term concrete photography.
Our exhibition is structured around this original work presented for the first time in France and consists of a selection of 28 unpublished prints, each accompanied by a facsimile of the book.
Artist exhibited :
Pit Kroke.
Douglas Allsop, Frank Gerritz & Joan Palà: connections in black
12 September – 26 October 2019
The works of three visual artists, Joan Palà (Barcelona 1922 – Paris 2015), Douglas Allsop born in 1943 in London and Frank Gerritz born in 1964 in Hamburg are brought together for the first time at the Gimpel & Müller gallery.
They follow a historical approach that is nevertheless common and could be described as post Minimal Art. The forms are subject to a strict symmetry sometimes undergoing a restricted and rigorous displacement that generates a controlled asymmetry.
The quasi-sound masses condensed in Frank Gerritz’s plan are contrasted by Douglas Allsop’s surfaces reflecting their environment. As for Joan Palà’s volumes, they propose a more classical relationship of balance between physical and mental perception.
These three artists rejected color to focus on the masses, their surfaces and the resulting dialogue in a light and space that resonates with the viewer.
Christophe Duvivier, director of the Musées de Pontoise
Artists exhibited :
Douglas Allsop, Frank Gerritz, Joan Palà.
Vera Röhm: autour de Rythmus 800
2 May – 15 June 2019
Rythmus 800, a monumental sculpture in anodized aluminum and plexiglass, is a serial alignment of 5 x 5 steles installed in the park of the Vasarely Foundation in Aix-en-Provence, facing the Sainte-Victoire mountain.
It was the starting point for a photographic work resulting from the documentary film dedicated to it by Loïc Djian. This film enriches our vision of Rythmus 800, presented here from different angles, with very spectacular high and low angle views; the effects of natural light during the day, the clever lighting effects at night, give the work another materiality.
Vera Röhm’s photographs, which are stills from the film, present the work frontally, with a very tight framing, so that the steles are reduced to an alignment of verticals. With a generally dark and dense tone, they offer the eye very nuanced gradations of black and gray, which seem to be traversed by a breath of light. Through this derealized approach to her subject, Vera Röhm offers a new vision of Rythmus 800 that reminds us that a photograph can exist outside of its subject and have a life of its own.
Domitille d’Orgeval, in Vera Röhm, Rythmus 800, 2017 (extract)
Artist exhibited :
Vera Röhm.
Victor Vasarely: peintures, collages et multiples
20 March – 20 April 2019
Having had the privilege of knowing the master well, we are paying tribute to him in our gallery in parallel with the major exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. Unpublished paintings, gouaches and collages as well as screen prints and multiples by the father of Op’Art will be presented for two months.
We will exhibit a set of complete portfolios including his album Bach – he loved the architecture of his music – which includes fourteen screen prints, three works described as “deep” (three-dimensional), a text by Jean-Louis Ferrier, the facsimile of the original of the sonatas and partitas for solo violin by Johann Sebastian Bach and the three-disc Deutsche Grammophon microgroove recording of the pieces by the famous violinist of Polish origin Henryk Szeryng.
Complete copies of this album published in 1973 are extremely rare.
Artist exhibited :
Victor Vasarely.